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tumnus
42 Posts |
 Posted - 2006 January 29 : 17:03:01
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Jane Murray, a junior last year in Santa Fe, flew out to Annapolis for the croquet match. A room was set up in Campbell basement for Santa Fe students to sleep in. Seeing that the couches were full and that many people were sleeping on the floor, she went to Paca Carroll, where she went to sleep on a couch. Security came in the middle of the night, woke her up, and without finding out who she was, yelled at her and told her that she was trespassing and had to leave. She left and came back the next day for the croquet match. She performed a cartwheel; Naval Academy Major Waddell complained to St. John's security. St. John's security, recognizing her from the previous night, demanded that she leave campus immediately. They did not allow her to get her picnic blanket and other possessions. They surrounded her and yelled at her; spooked, she ran and promptly fell. Security pounced on her and beat her up; she struggled with security while they did this. She was expelled from the college as a result of this incident; security claimed that she was acting aggressively although student witnesses disputed security accounts.
Witnesses deny that she was acting violently before the incident but many say that she was acting strangely. Jane Murray is highly energetic and klutzy. Bounding around the lawn, doing cartwheels, and bumping into people was interpreted by many people as strange behavior. Essentially she was beaten up for being weird. |
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moderator
38 Posts |
Posted - 2006 February 02 : 15:37:17
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| Mark Ingham, a witness to the event, filed a report with security at the time of the event. When it became obvious that the school was considering punishing Jane Murray, he filed a second, longer security report. This report is in the documents section of this website. |
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tumnus
42 Posts |
Posted - 2006 February 02 : 16:29:25
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| The manner in which Jane Murray was kicked out of school is especially disturbing. When she flew back to Santa Fe, David Levine, the dean of the Santa Fe campus, called her into his office. She had won school funding through the Ariel program for a summer internship in Portland, Oregon recycling demolished buildings. David Levine told her that he was not sure if the school could have someone as irresponsible as she represent the school. She was led to believe that this was the greatest punishment that she could possibly face for this incident. The school said that no final decision would be made until they completed an investigation. David Levine said that the decision rested with the assistant dean, Matt Davis. Matt Davis told Mark Ingham that he was receiving pressure from Annapolis to come down hard on her, a charge that Annapolis officials deny. At the beginning of the summer, she was told that her funding had been restored. Then she received a short letter from David Levine telling her that she needed to leave the college to think about what she had done. The letter did not give a reason for her expulsion nor did it specify if she had to leave for a year or permanently. She wrote David Levine to request a reason for the expulsion. She wrote to Michael Peters, the president of the Santa Fe campus, to request an appeal of the decision, as was her right in the student handbook. Michael Peters ignored her letter. Numerous letters were written to Santa Fe officials on her behalf by others. All these letters were ignored. She ultimately gave up and wrote to David Levine, telling him that she would take a year off but asked if she could return to the college in the future. David Levine wrote that if she ever wanted to return to the college again, she needed to show contrition. A friend of Jane's, Stephen Jablon, disgusted by all this, wrote to David Levine telling him that if he did not readmit Jane, he was going to write to college donors about the incident. David Levine ignored this letter, and Stephen wrote to sixty of the college's donors and several guidebooks, simultaneously notifying both campuses that he was doing this. Afterward, David Levine agreed to speak with Stephen briefly by telephone. He told Stephen that he did not respond to any communication because lawyers were involved, specifically Stephen's parents, who were with Jane on the day of the incident and wrote letters on her behalf. St. John's readmitted Jane three days before the end of the summer, but this allowed her insufficient time to come back to St. John's as she had prior commitments in Portland that she could not break on such short notice. |
Edited by - tumnus on 2006 April 23 16:27:20 |
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Jane Murray
